1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to data management and more particularly to utilizing historical data to determine currently affected entities.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, information retrieval is accomplished by searches using keywords, people, and dates. If a specific set of information is sought, very specific parameters may need to be input into a system that maintains the information in order to locate the set of information.
For litigation purposes, data and evidence within a company is required to be preserved in anticipation of, or during, litigation. Traditionally, the company will identify affected employees and systems likely to be associated with the litigation related data and evidence. In large companies, however, the identification of affected employees and systems is often complex due to a distributed and often-changing business structure and vast and ever-growing information landscape. However, it is vital that the company quickly identify affected employees who may have relevant data and systems where potentially relevant information may reside.
It is desirable to identify these affected employees and systems as quickly as possible in order to ensure proper preservation of evidence (e.g., data) and collection of the evidence. To preserve and collect the data, the affected employees will need to be notified and possibly interviewed. If the company fails to effectively and quickly preserve and collect the evidence, the company may face significant legal and economic penalties (e.g., sanctions and fines).
Conventionally, individuals manually determine the affected and involved people in a legal matter. There is typically no purpose-built application to perform this determination. Instead, it is usually a manual process using interviews, research through employee directories and organizational charts, and so forth.
Manually determining affected people and systems involved in a particular matter is time intensive, error prone, and potentially costly. Many legal matters relate to similar issues, affecting similar people, organizations, processes or functions. The knowledge created while identifying individuals and systems involved in past matters may be highly applicable and reusable in the context of future matters. While reusing this knowledge may provide significant gain in terms of time and cost, finding and identifying which part of the existing knowledge base may be applicable is a difficult process.